Greetings Loyal Airmen and welcome back to the Airship 27 Flight Log. We want to thank all of you who wrote to say how much you all enjoyed last week's How To Make A Pulp Cover entry. The piece, with all the accompanying pictures was so well received, it was actually reprinted at two popular pulp sites; All Pulp managed by Tommy Hancock and New Pulp managed by Mike Bullock. Thanks gentlemen for sharing the fun.

Now this week we are going to talk about two of the Air Chief's special projects for Moonstone Books and one unique cover that truly is a display of one man's abounding courage against a serious, life threatening ailment.  As most Loyal Airmen are aware, beside writing and managing Airship 27 Productions, the Air Chief also contributes short pulp fiction to other publishers, one of these being Moonstone Books managed by our good friend, Joe Gentile.  When Moonstone first obtained the prose rights to the Green Hornet, Joe invited me to contribute a story to their first volume and the Air Chief was only to happy to do so. At the end of last year, Moonstone began planning their second book in this series and this time they invited us to write the introduction to this new collection, a really distinct and flattering honor.

         
                Cover Art by Ruben Procopio
A few days ago THE GREEN HORNET CASEFILES rolled off the printing presses and our copies arrived in the mail.  The book features a terrific cover by the Air Chief's good friend, Ruben Procopio.  Note the book will not be available until the last week of this month, but there is plenty of time for all you Loyal Airmen to pre-order it at Amazon, other book dealers and even through your local comic shop.  Our introduction is called THE OUTLAW HERO and details the Air Chief's experiences writing the Green Hornet comic series for Now Comics back in the early 90s.  Brought back lots of happy memories.

      
                Cover Art by E.M.Gist
One of the Air Chief's favorite classic pulp hero is the Avenger first created by veteran pulp scribe Paul Ernst back in the 1940s.  The Avenger is Richard Henry Benson, a man whose wife and daughter were murdered by criminals sending his life into a dramatic tailspin.  Vowing vengeance, Benson then devotes his life to bringing all manner of villains to justice and establishes a group known appropriately as Justice, Inc.  Now several years ago Moonstone put out an anthology featuring all new Avenger stories but alas we were not invited to that party.  The Air Chief teased Joe about this fact and he said should they ever do a second, we would loved to be called on. Well that very fact has happened and late last year we were asked to contribute to the new book to be called THE AVENGER – JUSTICE INC.  Knowing this had to be a truly special story, we came up with the idea of telling the origin story of Benson's two truly unique weapons, Ike & Mike.  Ike is a perfectly balanced throwing knife and Mike is a small, tubular pistol that fires four .22 caliber bullets. Ernst never fully explained how Benson had come by these two amazing items in his arsenal and the challenge to tell that story was too tempting to ignore.  Thus this week also saw the release of that volume with the Air Chief's story, VENGEANCE IS MINE.  Honestly, Loyal Airmen, its a tale we are extremely proud of and hope you'll check out.  The cover to this book was done by one E.M. Gist and like the Green Hornet title, will only be available at the end of the month through the same sources as mentioned above.  As you can see, ye Old Air Chief does keep busy.

     
                Faux Cover Art by Mike Fyles
And now for the coolest cover of them all.  Several years ago, via our Airship 27 Production books, the Air Chief and Art Director Rob Davis, became acquainted with a super talented British artist named Mike Fyles.  Mike first hooked up with us by painting the cover to our very first Green Lama anthology at the same time he was doing dynamite comic covers for Marvel's Iron Man Noire series.  One of the writers in our GL collection was Adam Garcia and Adam was so taken with Mike's work that when he began writing his full length Green Lama Unbound novel, he asked Mike to do both the cover and interior illustrations for it.  Rob and the Air Chief totally supported that idea and happily Mike signed on.  That amazing book won Adam the 2010 Pulp Factory Award for Best Pulp Novel and for Mike, the 2010 Pulp Factory Award for Best Interior Illustrations.  Both fellows were extremely thrilled and delighted.

Along about this time, way back at the start of the year, Mike became ill and was diagnosed with serious stomach cancer.  All too soon his life was taking a very serious detour.  Mike, his wife and their doctors began outlining a strategy to defeat this dreaded ailment and return him to complete health. The process would start with some powerful chemo treatments to allow him to ultimately be well enough to undergo surgery.  Over the past few months Mike Fyles endured those treatments and they were rough.  Meanwhile all of us who know him were praying daily and sending him our good thoughts, our letters of hope and encouragement.  Adam even flew out to England on a summer trip and personally hand delivered Mike his Pulp Factory Award.  Throughout all this Mike never once faltered or lost hope.  Now the chemo is finished, it did what was necessary and the surgeons have deemed him strong enough for the planned surgery. That is scheduled for next week, the 14th of Sept.  Needless to say, all of us at Airship 27 and the Pulp Factory have underlined that date on our calendars and will be praying up a storm, that the Good Lord and his angels will rain down their love on Mike and his family on that day.

In the meanwhile Mike, feeling like his old self again, decided to go back to his drawing table this past week and make up a very special pulp cover, one in which he would lay out all his fears and expose them for all the world to see.  In that way conquer them, leaving only room for courage and hope in his heart. That art piece he posted on Facebook and when the Air Chief saw it, he smiled from ear to ear and knew he had to share it with all you Loyal Airmen.  Mike Fyles is one of the kindest, bravest souls we've ever known and we have absolutely no doubt he is going to beat the stuffing out of the Big C.  And so we humbly ask all you Loyal Airmen to add your prayers to ours in wishing him a successful surgery and quick, complete recovery.  The world needs his amazing art more than ever.  God bless, Mike…and stay strong!

Ron – Over & Out!